San Mateo County

Two San Mateo County supervisors want to ban sales of e-cigarette products in unincorporated areas of the county.

A former parent-teacher association treasurer at an elementary school in San Bruno was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of embezzling more than $80,000 from the group over a two-year period, police said.

Along the Bay Area coast, one community is hoping a scheduled PG&E power shutoff Tuesday night won't impact its economic livelihood as the previous two events have.

In a news release, PG&E announced that approximately 940,000 cutomers (more than 2.5 million people) will be affected.in 36 counties.

PG&E Thursday gave a weather "all clear" to customers affected by its Public Safety Power Shutoff that began Wednesday in the North Bay and Sierra foothills above Interstate Highway 80, and the utility company will begin inspecting its equipment before it restores power.

Crews from San Mateo County and Cal Fire are working to extinguish a vegetation fire in Pescadero. The incident has been named the Cabrillo Fire.

A brush fire off of Highway 1 and Gazos Creek Road south of Pescadero in San Mateo County is 95 acres and 25% contained, according to CalFire.  

The prosecution started at 9am with their closing arguments. It took San Mateo County Deputy District Attorney Bryan Abanto two hours to get through his remarks. 

A family on the Peninsula is asking for help finding their missing mother. Maria Guadalupe Serrano was last seen walking to a job site in Half Moon Bay back in 1998 and has not been heard from since then. She had two young sons at the time. 

Facebook built a multi-billion dollar business on the back of social networking. Now the Menlo Park tech giant is lending its financial broad shoulders to helping solve the California housing crisis. “It’s a continuum. It’s not new. It’s scaling what we’ve done in the past, where we saw benefits from our interventions,” said Menka Sethi, Facebook’s Location Strategy Director. She says the company began its foray into housing in 2016 to explore possible pitfalls. Now, Facebook is pledging $1 billion to construct 20,000 units of housing state-wide over the next decade. The tech giant says $250 million is designated for mixed-income housing on excess state land and $150 million for affordable housing. Another $225 million, this time in Menlo Park land, earmarked for affordable housing. And $25 million to build teacher and essential worker housing in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties “If this is gonna be an effective deployment of capitol, it’s important this be true philanthropy and real money on the ground assistance and not another investment scheme,” said Prof. Kelly Snider, a regional and urban planning expert at San Jose State University. Housing and urban planning experts say over this decade, the Bay Area has created only one new unit of housing for every 10 new jobs. The result has pushed the price of housing skyward and forced many middle-class families to leave. Advocates say Facebook and other tech giants such as Google can make a dent in the problem with large donations, coupled with partnerships with community members to address the housing shortage. “This is critical. It means a range of income level people can stay in our communities.,” said Duane Bay, Executive Director of EPACANDO, an affordable housing organization. Added Sethi, “The urgency to step up now and solve the big problems, it felt real and we felt we could help, and so here we are.” There is $350 million being held in reserve for future commitments. The question now: How fast can the multiple municipalities act?

Farmer Mike Valladao and his interesting art was the center of attention because carving pumpkins takes on a whole different meaning for him, “The first year I had some giant pumpkins and nothing to do with them so I carved them and quickly it occurred to me that it was too thick for the typical triangle eyes,” he said.

A caller notified police about 4:30 a.m. after seeing two males rummaging through parked vehicles in the 800 block of El Camino Real.

Police said the subsequent investigation revealed Quintana forcibly raped the victim. He was taken into custody without incident.

It's an idea that would take study as well as input at the state level.